date:20100412

Re: [IAEP] Long-term development strategy (Was: New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 119)

2010-04-12 Thread Aleksey Lim

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 09:31:25PM -0400, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-04-12 at 23:54 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
> > Bernie, I'm not sure the point of this point at this point in time. To
> > copy and paste part of the response I did to the other thread on
> > fedora-olpc for others benefit.
> > 
> > I personally don't see the point discussing it because from where I
> > sit I believe it will be supported well in both and continue to be so.
> > That way people have the choice. It might well get to a stage where
> > the newer versions of sugar won't run in RHEL/CentOS due to whatever
> > deps at which point we get to a situation where that release becomes
> > like 0.84 is currently and is a long term support release. I don't see
> > why its hard to support both because its not. The package maintenance
> > is simple and is done easily by a couple of people. There will be
> > Fedora and it will continue to be supported in Fedora for the
> > developers and the like that want the bleeding edge and then there
> > will be the EL branch for those that don't like so much blood. Its
> > called choice. There's no reason to limit it. There's not much point
> > discussing it at the moment as RHEL-6 isn't out yet, yes its in beta
> > but its not out.
> 
> I agree on this, but it misses the point :-)
> 
> I'm sure maintaining the Sugar 0.84 packages will be easy in RHEL6 as it
> is in F11. I've even back-ported Sugar 0.88 to Fedora 11 with minimal
> tweaks.
> 

> Most end-user support issues lay within base OS components rather than
> the relatively small codebase of Sugar.

That's what I'm feeling all time started from the first time of my
participating in sugar when I packaged sugar for several distros.

> Here are some real-world
> examples from this development cycle:
>
>  * GSM connectivity requires up-to-date versions of udev and
>modem-manager to support USB dongles commonly available in stores
> 
>  * Playing multimedia content downloaded from the Internet requires
>gstreamer with up-to-date codecs
> 
>  * activities such as Record tend to uncover obscure bugs in GStreamer 
> 
>  * Browse depends on xulrunner for security and compatiblity with web
>standards. Surfing the web today with a version of Firefox from
>3 years ago would be unthinkable
> 
>  * ...not to mention NetworkManager...
> 
> 
> I would guesstimate that 80% of my time went into fixing platform bugs
> and just 20% on Sugar itself. In part, this is because I could offload
> the actual bugfixing to helpful people such as alsroot, silbe,
> sayamindu, mtd and others.
> 
> 
> > In short RHEL-6 isn't out yet, the associated CentOS6 release is quite
> > a while away as a result. Also ARM isn't a supported platform there.
> > Sugar is about options and I think having both options will be of
> > benefit to different users. I believe the leading edge Fedora will
> > continue to be a platform for development and then others in the know
> > or deployments themselves can make the decision as to what's best for
> > them.
> 
> In practice, choosing the distro independently of Sugar won't be
> feasible on the XO until:
> 
> 1) we merge (or kill) all the OLPC customizations. dsd and sdz have done
>a lot of work in this direction, but there are still a number of
>rogue packages in F11-XO1.
> 
> 2) we switch to a real package system for activities with full support
>for dependency checking and a build cluster for multiple targets.
> 
> After this is done, it remains to be seen if someone who is using RHEL-6
> on the XO would be able to file a bug in Red Hat's Bugzilla and actually
> get it fixed for free. I have a feeling one would need to purchase an
> enterprise support contract of some kind in order to attract the
> necessary developer attention.

and thats why I like 0install way - it is not tied to particular distro
(packaging system) but can get benefits from all major distros (via
PackageKit) and add distro agnostic packaging system.

In my plans create distro agnostic sugar distribution entirely based on
0install - on most recent systems, users need only several clicks to
install sugar w/o root privileges and even if sugar didn't packaged at
all for this particular distro.

-- 
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Re: using XO for Internet Math Tutoring

2010-04-12 Thread Martin Langhoff

Hi,

sorry I'm brief (to the unfortunate point of rudeness) -- I am working
30hr days in a 60K deployment. Which happens to want to use Flash. In
fact I just helped the local team find adobe.com and we are adding the
relevant rpm to the build.

I find it puzzling that there is so much over the top drama. Situation
is simple.

"Mainstream users" get their XO from a deployment -- it's up to the
deployment team to define the OS (inc Flash), and they have no prob
rolling it into the image.

Other users (those that get OLPC's images) are usually developers...
who can hopefully rpm -i MyFaveRuntime-1.2.4.rpm with no problem.
Sonya has you as resident geek I can guess, so it is up to you to do
the rpm magic -- I have similar duties at home as the resident geek.

There is the G1G1 crowd as a 3rd group. If you care about them, get a
Flash enthusiasts gang and spin an image with Flash (get Adobe's ok,
of course).

There is no drama to justify these huge discussions. Let's see the end
of this thread.




m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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errata

2010-04-12 Thread Carlos Nazareno

sorry to bother you guys again.

Sorry for the mixup, the game Snow Farm plagiarized by the Beijing
Olympic Committee dev team is by The Pencil Farm, not Ferry Halim.
Pencil Farm is one of the other guys plagiarized too. I was in a rush,
lack sleep and just quick-copy pasted from years-ago-memory-google
without re-reading the article.

Here's more about it:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/03/new-beijing-summer-olympics-event-software-piracy.ars

"Yes, it seems that you have a skill you can't yet use, because
someone else is needed first to prepare something you can build on. If
there's any way we're stopping that someone else from working, let us
know."

Hi James! It's more of needing help documenting the technical hurdles
we need to overcome. So we can forward them to Adobe & they can give
us help. Busy with work, will set up/edit the Wikis later in the
week, give a buzz & hope those of you guys in the know can help
document what's needed.

"I look for function, not for attractive interfaces."

And that is where the open source community fails. You guys have to
realize how important UX is (user experience), it's why the mac &
iphone succeeds despite their hardware being "inferior"/less bang for
buck.

I know a lot of us would rather date the less attractive girl over the
dumb blonde, but are you guys saying the smart blonde is less hawt?
(go Natalie Portman!)

Quick question and raise of hands: who else here is a professional designer?

Talk to you guys later in the week. Good luck with the release!

-n

--
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
--
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Re: [IAEP] Long-term development strategy (Was: New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 119)

2010-04-12 Thread Yamandu Ploskonka

IMHO I not only agree 120%, but also OLE Bolivia has budgeted support 
for upstreaming development.
The idea being, if we are going to benefit, as an 
institution/country/project from work done professionally, if we are 
going to depend on it and expect it keeps up with improvements, then we 
have a duty to feed it, upstream, regularly.

While an individual needs not be made responsible for that, I believe 
that any deployment above, say, 30-50 machines should consider helping 
fund development, at the local level especially, and have that 
development be made available to others.  Deployments above the 1.000 
units definitely can be counted as fair play when they have people on 
staff who are regularly connected with others worldwide in this effort.

One of the uglier sides of piracy is that there is little sense of the 
duty to give back that has been built over the years.

Hopefully we will get our project permitted to start sometime soon and 
we'll be able to contribute, as we have already benefited a lot from 
y'alls work.  As Bernie says, there is a lot of skills out there, just 
waiting to be given a chance.

Yama
>   I've been spending several months looking at problems
> in the field, trying to fix some of them and, more importantly, trying
> to build local capacity for fixing them autonomously. In my mind, this
> is *the only* reasonable strategy to scale Sugar support up to the size
> of an entire planet. Those who think it would be impossible for people
> in developing nations to learn the technical skills needed for fixing
> their software would be shocked to see what Nepal and Paraguay have been
> able to achieve in just two years, with very little funding.
>
>
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Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC

2010-04-12 Thread Mikus Grinbergs

> So, I guess you don't install any software that you download and run, like
> Firefox or OpenOffice.org or Google Earth?

I've installed and am running applications such as Firefox 3.6.3 (plus
Flash 10.1), Google Chrome 5.0.342.9, Adobe Reader 9.3.1, mplayer,
FBReader, etc. -- because I trust the organizations that made these
applications available.  Haven't installed OpenOffice - *why* would I
want to run it on the XO ?  Tried to install Google Earth once (to see
if I could) - the installation process ran out of some kind of resource,
and I was not interested enough to fix whatver the difficulty was.

> The point about AIR is
> that it lets the developer use the same tools to develop rich Internet
> applications and desktop applications with attractive "rich" user
> interfaces.

O.K.  My point is that I am not the target for that developer - I have
little interest in acquiring his application, no matter how rich it is.
[I look for function, not for attractive interfaces.]  And if I get an
opportunity to mentor a newbie, I will try to convey what kind of things
I think he should pay the most attention to.

mikus
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open source vs. constructionist learning

2010-04-12 Thread Carlos Nazareno

Questions:

A) Syntax vs. Algorithms

Scenario 1:
complex XO game is built in C, binary, complete C sourcecode + all
source files + minimal documentation are included. Kid only
understands Python. Sourcecode is complete gibberish. Kid enjoys game
anyway & learns from content.

Scenario 2:
complex XO game is built in C, binary, no sourcefiles or C sourcecode
included, but algorithms/principles used to create the game +
mechanics in English tutorial + pseudocode are included so users can
create their own version of the game using any language. Kid only
understands Python. Kid enjoys game anyway & learns from content.

Which of the 2 scenarios is constructionist?

B) Engaging vs. Spoonfeeding

Scenario 1:
Closed binary of new free fantastic game is provided, contains
chockful of puzzles & easter eggs for kid to explore and discover.
There are no spoilers available on the net. Kid explores and
collaborates with friends & classmates to solve the game, gain
inspiration from the game & implement their own inspired version in
Python.

Scenario 2:
Sourcecode is included, kids peek into the sourcecode to get all the
answers to the puzzles without having to explore, collaborate or flex
their mental muscles or creativity. Basically no effort. Game over,
game is done. They have a good laugh and move on to the next game.

Which of the 2 scenarios is constructionist?

Alternately, replace game with multiple choice math puzzles. Available
multiple choice answers had no explanation, just the plain answers
(e.g. 5, 12, 3.5, etc)

C) Artistic Vision

Scenario 1:
I am an artist. This is my vision of a game, this is how I implemented
it. This is my artistic statement, and I hope it inspires the audience
to create their own artistic statement (hopefully games themselves
too) inspired by it. I do not want users to tinker with and modify the
sourcecode game itself I made, I want them to flex their mental
muscles and creativity and create their own original games using any
tool they want.

Theoretical Example:
http://www.amanita-design.net/samorost-1/

Scenario 2:
Kid changes some of the text like the names of the characters, reskins
some of the art assets, but game is unchanged. Laughs and enjoyment
are had by friends, but nothing groundbreaking or original is
achieved.

Real-world  Example:
http://www.thepencilfarm.com/blog/2008/02/snow_day_at_the_beijing_olympi.html

The *Official* Beijing Olympics committee hired programmmers who
reverse engineered & plagiarized Ferry Halim's game snow Day
(http://www.orisinal.com -> Please check it out, the Ferry is a truly
gifted pioneering artist/game developer), not even bothering to
replace some very obvious art assets.

Which of the 2 scenarios is constructionist?

(please note that I am into the mod community. I love to death the
games & mods that starting hackers & budding game developers made in
doom, quake, half-life & unreal. Counterstrike & Team Fortress  would
not exist without the mod community or the support ID software or
Valve gave them.)

I know you guys are sick of my voice, so I'm going to refrain from
posting for a while. Please give the above serious thought, and I
would really really appreciate it if I could hear your thoughts.

Please have a great week, continue to rock on, you guys are my heroes.

All the best,

-n

-- 
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
--
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zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
--
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Re: [IAEP] Long-term development strategy (Was: New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 119)

2010-04-12 Thread Bernie Innocenti

On Mon, 2010-04-12 at 23:54 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
> Bernie, I'm not sure the point of this point at this point in time. To
> copy and paste part of the response I did to the other thread on
> fedora-olpc for others benefit.
> 
> I personally don't see the point discussing it because from where I
> sit I believe it will be supported well in both and continue to be so.
> That way people have the choice. It might well get to a stage where
> the newer versions of sugar won't run in RHEL/CentOS due to whatever
> deps at which point we get to a situation where that release becomes
> like 0.84 is currently and is a long term support release. I don't see
> why its hard to support both because its not. The package maintenance
> is simple and is done easily by a couple of people. There will be
> Fedora and it will continue to be supported in Fedora for the
> developers and the like that want the bleeding edge and then there
> will be the EL branch for those that don't like so much blood. Its
> called choice. There's no reason to limit it. There's not much point
> discussing it at the moment as RHEL-6 isn't out yet, yes its in beta
> but its not out.

I agree on this, but it misses the point :-)

I'm sure maintaining the Sugar 0.84 packages will be easy in RHEL6 as it
is in F11. I've even back-ported Sugar 0.88 to Fedora 11 with minimal
tweaks.

Most end-user support issues lay within base OS components rather than
the relatively small codebase of Sugar. Here are some real-world
examples from this development cycle:

 * GSM connectivity requires up-to-date versions of udev and
   modem-manager to support USB dongles commonly available in stores

 * Playing multimedia content downloaded from the Internet requires
   gstreamer with up-to-date codecs

 * activities such as Record tend to uncover obscure bugs in GStreamer 

 * Browse depends on xulrunner for security and compatiblity with web
   standards. Surfing the web today with a version of Firefox from
   3 years ago would be unthinkable

 * ...not to mention NetworkManager...

I would guesstimate that 80% of my time went into fixing platform bugs
and just 20% on Sugar itself. In part, this is because I could offload
the actual bugfixing to helpful people such as alsroot, silbe,
sayamindu, mtd and others.

> In short RHEL-6 isn't out yet, the associated CentOS6 release is quite
> a while away as a result. Also ARM isn't a supported platform there.
> Sugar is about options and I think having both options will be of
> benefit to different users. I believe the leading edge Fedora will
> continue to be a platform for development and then others in the know
> or deployments themselves can make the decision as to what's best for
> them.

In practice, choosing the distro independently of Sugar won't be
feasible on the XO until:

1) we merge (or kill) all the OLPC customizations. dsd and sdz have done
   a lot of work in this direction, but there are still a number of
   rogue packages in F11-XO1.

2) we switch to a real package system for activities with full support
   for dependency checking and a build cluster for multiple targets.

After this is done, it remains to be seen if someone who is using RHEL-6
on the XO would be able to file a bug in Red Hat's Bugzilla and actually
get it fixed for free. I have a feeling one would need to purchase an
enterprise support contract of some kind in order to attract the
necessary developer attention.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs   - http://sugarlabs.org/

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Adobe Flash vs. Gnash -> very important bug

2010-04-12 Thread Carlos Nazareno

There's been so many changes and additions ever since Flash 9 and AS3
was introduced. Among them is byte-level manipulation which allows us
to do really funky creative stuff, especially if combo-ed with AIR
which allows you to read & write to the local filesystem.

More importantly is the 2-100x increase in performance from AVM1-AVM2
(depending on how you built your app) which is crucial given the XO's
limited CPU & memory.

Gnash mostly supports AS2 and the AVM1 and is really just compatible
up to Flash 8 SWFs and there's a very very big obscure bug that's not
very documented in the AVM1 (AS2 code is ultimately converted to AS1
bytecode -- that's why AS1 & AS2 SWFs are compatible and can
communicate. AS2 & AS3 SWFs are not.):

There's a maximum filesize allowed per class because of the way the
AVM1 compiler works. I forgot the exact number, but once you go beyond
2000 lines of code in a .AS class file, things will just break down
and the app starts to malfunction.

We had one game project where the main Class file was approaching 3000
lines of code. We were wondering why after adding just 10 lines of
code which had completely correct syntax, the app would suddenly break
and just stop working at a certain point. It was because of that very
obscure bug (I don't have the link right now but it's in one of the
old obscure Flash MX docs about limits).

If you're wondering how the heck one reaches 2k+ lines of code for a
class (that class finally weighed in at 67kb plaintext in the final
build), 2k is not very hard to hit if you're developing a  complex
game.

-- 
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
--
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Re: tool elitism

2010-04-12 Thread Martin Langhoff

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Carlos Nazareno  wrote:
>>>And shiny distracts.
>
> Then write an app that's not shiny. Can you please get over your gut
> revulsion? I have the same reaction to Macs.

Ok gentlemen. Let's put things this way -- we are cluttering the
development list of olpc just as we are nearing a release, with things
that are not about helping development at all. They are about our
favourite tools. This is 100% offtopic at a very bad time.

Carlos, Flash lovers, feel free to make your own images with Flash or
install Flash on your machine.. When a _deployment team_ bundles Flash
in an image in their OS image, *there is no problem*. They have to
fill an online form at adobe.com, and add the rpm to the build. That's
all the drama.

The only complication you might face is that if you build an OS image
with Flash, the terms of licensing with Adobe allow you to distribute
but forbid further re-distribution. In other words: no mirrors, no
derivatives of your image. If you have a problem with that, direct
your email rage at adobe.com .

OLPC wants to encourage mirrors and people (deployment teams!) making
derivatives of our images, so those terms are no go.

So -- there is *no* drama. Stop this show. Over now. There's a lot of
real work to do.

m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: iPhone comparison

2010-04-12 Thread James Cameron

Yes, it seems that you have a skill you can't yet use, because someone
else is needed first to prepare something you can build on.  If there's
any way we're stopping that someone else from working, let us know.

-- 
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http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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re: iPhone comparison

2010-04-12 Thread Carlos Nazareno

Yes, it's a hyperbole. I'm sorry for insulting everyone with the
comparison to Evil Steve but can put your emotions aside, look at this
objectively, and see my frustration?

I want to help, but I can't. This is the skillset that I have, and
thousands of others have the same problem. I'm not a computer
scientist, I'm just a self-taught cowboy coder.

I'm very busy with work and am struggling as it is to keep up with the
insanely rapid developments in my field. I have too much on my plate
to add learning python, sugarization or the other currently available
avenues of building apps for the XO.

I shouldn't have to "do my homework" -- reading the wiki should be
enough to tell me where I can help given my skillset and the fact that
I'm not a Linux person.

Given everything I've said here, why is Flash content (that is
developed to be optimized, not your typical unoptimized fare) not
suitable for the XO? I'm not a Silverlight dev, but if it has free dev
tools available, why not Silverlight too?

Oh, another advantage Flash & AIR gives for the XO compared to DHTML
is that you can have self-contained highly complex apps within single
SWF/AIR file. With DHTML, a lot of projects are done with multiple
HTML files being called, and that just doesn't play nice with the
Sugar's filesystem, nor does it lend well to sharing between students.

--
Here's the bottomline.

I know many of you hate Flash. I did too, back in the 90s and hated
2advanced with a passion because of its bloat and most flash content
was so bloated they were unviewable on our dial-up network connections
here.

You have to realize that the Flash platform is now a completely
different animal than it used to be. It's very powerful, convenient,
and allows us interaction designers to do things that would've been
impractical/difficult or at least very tedious in any other platform.

I've outlined my points and the potential for the increased
availability of quality content for the users.I want to help,
personally for me, this is how. I'm a Flash game developer, that's
what I'm good at.

For example, I want to modify, optimize and contribute this
boggle-like game I made to the kids:
http://www.mochimedia.com/contest/may09/games/word-blix_v1

Yes or No?

-Naz
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Updating my prior comments about FlashPlayer on the XO-1

2010-04-12 Thread Stanley Sokolow

After writing my explanation of why I turned to a Xubuntu system last year
to get FlashPlayer going on my XO for my wife's Internet Math Tutoring
project, I thought I ought to see what improvements have been made since
that decision.I see on the Wiki that there are Sugarized activities now
for Opera & Firefox & FlashPlayer.I'll give them a try.   Maybe I can
quit using the SD-card-installed Xubuntu system and get back to Sugar as the
tutoring platform.
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Re: using XO for Internet Math Tutoring

2010-04-12 Thread Stanley Sokolow

Martin,

Sonya wanted me to reply on her behalf.   I have written a brief explanation
of our attempts to "just install Flash" on the XO with the ex-factory, that
is, the factory installed, operating system.   I just sent it to the
developers' list.What someone like Sonya needs is an OS on the XO that
has Adobe FlashPlayer installed ex-factory, or easily added by downloading
it, but the story of Flash on the XO is not so simple.  Since OPLC's
developers seem to want nothing to do with the proprietary, but free to use,
FlashPlayer, and since Gnash isn't even running a close second place to
FlashPlayer, someone who wants to use Flash-based web applications is stuck
unless he/she knows enough about computers to go around Sugar and get
FlashPlayer and a browser that plays nicely with it.  She was hoping to
create a tutoring capability that works within Sugar, but building it from
scratch using Python and Sugar just isn't feasible nor cost-effective when
web apps already exist to do what she needs, just not within Sugar.

I'm hoping that when the new version of Fedora for XO-1.5 is released, a
backport to XO-1 will also be released, and that it will support
FlashPlayer, the real one from Adobe, without requiring the user to be an IT
expert.

Stan

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Martin Langhoff
wrote:

> Hi -
>
> just install Flash. You don't need anything from me or OLPC.
>
> kind regards,
>
>
> martin
>
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Sonya Sokolow 
> wrote:
> > 4/12/10 12:40pm CA time
> >
> > Hi Martin,
> >
> > I am Sonya Sokolow, PhD, owner of Internet Math Tutoring (IMT):
> > http://www.internetmathtutoring.com .  I also maintain the blog about
> using
> > XO's in Africa and India for IMT:
> http://www.internetmathtutoring.com/olpc
> > .
> >
> >  In my experience, having a web cam and an interactive white board as
> tools
> > for internet math tutoring make the teaching very much more effective
> than
> > having only type chat or delayed email responses.  I use
> http://www.Vyew.com
> > as an interactive whiteboard.  It is flash-based.  I use an SD card on
> the
> > XO  which my husband Stanley Sokolow made for me.  I hope that soon in
> the
> > future I won't have to use the SD card  anymore.  That is, I am hoping
> that
> > the XO's will become compatible with Flash.
> >
>
>
>
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>
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Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC

2010-04-12 Thread Stanley Sokolow

So, I guess you don't install any software that you download and run, like
Firefox or OpenOffice.org or Google Earth?  An AIR program doesn't just
sneak itself onto your system -- the user decides to buy it, or trust the
source of it, downloads it, and runs the installer.  The point about AIR is
that it lets the developer use the same tools to develop rich Internet
applications and desktop applications with attractive "rich" user
interfaces.

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Mikus Grinbergs  wrote:

> > The AIR application is given more freedom -- for example, it can
> > access local files.
>
> Back when Netscape first came out, I was bitten when a "selfish" plugin
> changed my system's defaults without me realizing it.  Ever since, I do
> NOT want a remotely acquired program to be able to access the local
> files in my system.  [The "nobody" user was invented to limit access.]
>
> I'm willing to mess with my local files myself.  But if a program from
> who-knows-where might mess with my local files -- I'd rather deny myself
> whatever experience that program is supposed to bring -- rather than
> chance having that program change how I have set up my system to run.
>
> > Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ for examples of AIR
> > applications you can download and run.
>
> I did.  Nothing there looks like something I can't live without.
>
> mikus
>
>
>
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Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC

2010-04-12 Thread Mikus Grinbergs

> The AIR application is given more freedom -- for example, it can
> access local files.

Back when Netscape first came out, I was bitten when a "selfish" plugin
changed my system's defaults without me realizing it.  Ever since, I do
NOT want a remotely acquired program to be able to access the local
files in my system.  [The "nobody" user was invented to limit access.]

I'm willing to mess with my local files myself.  But if a program from
who-knows-where might mess with my local files -- I'd rather deny myself
whatever experience that program is supposed to bring -- rather than
chance having that program change how I have set up my system to run.

> Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ for examples of AIR
> applications you can download and run.

I did.  Nothing there looks like something I can't live without.

mikus


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Fwd: Flash + AIR on OLPC

2010-04-12 Thread Stanley Sokolow

Sorry, I keep forgetting to put the list manager in my addresses.   Here's
my latest message:

-- Forwarded message --
From: Stanley Sokolow 
Date: Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:05 PM
Subject: Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
To: mi...@bga.com


I forgot to answer your statement below about Linux on the XO:

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Mikus Grinbergs  wrote:

> ...
>
> p.s.  People keep showing various Linux platforms (e.g., Ubuntu, Debian,
> etc) running on the XO.  As far as I am concerned, if these people
> *want* to run Ubuntu, Debian, etc., then buying a modern netbook for
> that purpose will give them better performance than using the XO.
>
>
When I started helping my wife develop an interactive math tutoring
capability for the XO we bought from the 2008 G1G1 campaign, I looked at and
tried the Sugar activities.None of them were capable of her necessary
features:  2-way interactive whiteboard and 2-way interactive video and
audio communications.Sure, some activities were in development trying to
achieve these capabilities, but they weren't real yet.   We tried a web
services approach -- looked at various things like "Go to Meeting".When
we found www.Vyew.com, we saw what we needed.   It worked on our PCs.
Turning to the XO, the Browse activity with Gnash just couldn't run Vyew.
When I installed the version of FlashPlayer that the laptop.org wiki
recommended, it didn't work the XOs camera and microphone and didn't even
operate the Flash settings dialog properly.Doing more searching, I found
a version of Ubuntu that had been adapted to the XO by a user who called
himself "Teapot" on the forum.   It's a stripped down, lightweight version
that uses Xfce as the window manager (hence it's called a Xubuntu
distribution) and incorporates the same kernel that olpc used in the version
of Fedora that came on our XO beneath Sugar, so it knows about the XO's
unique hardware.After some work, I got it running from an SD card so I
didn't have to trash the native operating system.I didn't do this
because I wanted to run Linux -- I have other Linux machines -- but rather
because it would let me get the job done, the system built with the features
necessary for the tutoring project.   If the XO comes up to that capability
with Browse and Gnash, I'd run the native system.But it's not there,
yet.  We also tried to use Skype on the native Sugar/Fedora OS, but at that
time, you had to do so many hokey work-arounds to fool the software into
running Skype, it just wasn't feasible for a deployment with low entry
threshold.

The 6 to 12 year-old kids that are the prime target of the olpc mission
don't care what platform is behind the screen.   Just as in the Wizard of
Oz, "Don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain."   As the
laptop.org mission statement says, "It’s not a laptop project. It’s an
education project."   To me that says that the mission is not to empower
kids to write programs or tinker inside the system, but rather to use the XO
as an educational tool to learn about the world and life and such, to
collaborate with each other across the room and around the globe, to explore
the depth of knowledge on the Internet, etc.

Stan
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Re: Long-term development strategy (Was: New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 119)

2010-04-12 Thread James Cameron

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 06:12:46PM -0400, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> In the past, Sugar and OLPC development was much hurt by its
> disconnection from the rest of the free software ecosystem on which it
> was built. We need to get much closer to our upstream projects, both in
> time (by using current software) and in space (by not diverging our
> codebase). It's not just a technological issue, it's a long-term
> sustainability issue.

+1

I've also observed a correlation between cost of fixing problems and the
release distance between the version we have and the upstream versions
available.

This distance, or lag, is important in the enterprise context, where
I've worked for years in support ... but the lag causes higher costs
that enterprise users can bear.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Re: [IAEP] Long-term development strategy (Was: New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 119)

2010-04-12 Thread Peter Robinson

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 11:12 PM, Bernie Innocenti  wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 13:29 -0700, Jon Nettleton wrote:
>
>> Has there been any discussion on whether CentOS was an option as a
>> base for the distro?  With RHEL/CentOS 6 hopefully within sight, that
>> would give a nice target to provide both the combination of stability
>> and long term support.
>
> This comes up every once in a while. Frankly, I don't "believe" in the
> value of enterprise Linux distributions; I've been stuck with them in a
> couple of cases in the past, and they were always a support PITA even
> for non-development usage: nobody in the community cares to help you
> with debugging and back-porting recent versions of software becomes
> increasingly painful over time.
>
> Granted, frequently upgrading the OS also comes with its own aches too,
> but these are amply compensated by useful new features and better
> support from upstream.
>
> We've been very lucky that Dan Williams was kind enough to spend some of
> his time for helping us with critical bugs in NetworkManager 0.7. We've
> not been equally lucky with udev and GStreamer, both of which have
> unsolved issues in F11 for which we lack expertise.
>
> Over the last 5 years, I've become a strong advocate of the
> decentralized, community-driven development model. I do believe in it
> because I've observed it at work for 15 years. Traditionally minded
> managers are still looking at this enormous market value accumulated by
> the open model as some sort of economic anomaly; some sort of prestige
> trick which contradicts the rules of classic schoolbooks. Yet, an entire
> industry of new businesses has grown out of free software and is
> flourishing with it. Those who guessed its rules can play the game and
> win.
>
> As Martin and I discussed not long ago, our development model doesn't
> have to directly affect end-users. Already released free software
> doesn't have an expiration date. Conservative users can keep using Sugar
> 0.82 forever, if they really like it better than newer releases.
> Bugfixes and new features could be back-ported from newer releases, of
> course with increasing costs as time passes.
>
> We OLPC & Sugar developers cannot effectively support the entire
> codebase of an entire OS without strong backing from the larger Fedora
> community and the even larger global Linux community.
>
> In the past, Sugar and OLPC development was much hurt by its
> disconnection from the rest of the free software ecosystem on which it
> was built. We need to get much closer to our upstream projects, both in
> time (by using current software) and in space (by not diverging our
> codebase). It's not just a technological issue, it's a long-term
> sustainability issue.
>
> Before anyone yells "Yarr! Ye don't care about the children!", I'd like
> to point out that I've been spending several months looking at problems
> in the field, trying to fix some of them and, more importantly, trying
> to build local capacity for fixing them autonomously. In my mind, this
> is *the only* reasonable strategy to scale Sugar support up to the size
> of an entire planet. Those who think it would be impossible for people
> in developing nations to learn the technical skills needed for fixing
> their software would be shocked to see what Nepal and Paraguay have been
> able to achieve in just two years, with very little funding.

Bernie, I'm not sure the point of this point at this point in time. To
copy and paste part of the response I did to the other thread on
fedora-olpc for others benefit.

I personally don't see the point discussing it because from where I
sit I believe it will be supported well in both and continue to be so.
That way people have the choice. It might well get to a stage where
the newer versions of sugar won't run in RHEL/CentOS due to whatever
deps at which point we get to a situation where that release becomes
like 0.84 is currently and is a long term support release. I don't see
why its hard to support both because its not. The package maintenance
is simple and is done easily by a couple of people. There will be
Fedora and it will continue to be supported in Fedora for the
developers and the like that want the bleeding edge and then there
will be the EL branch for those that don't like so much blood. Its
called choice. There's no reason to limit it. There's not much point
discussing it at the moment as RHEL-6 isn't out yet, yes its in beta
but its not out.

In short RHEL-6 isn't out yet, the associated CentOS6 release is quite
a while away as a result. Also ARM isn't a supported platform there.
Sugar is about options and I think having both options will be of
benefit to different users. I believe the leading edge Fedora will
continue to be a platform for development and then others in the know
or deployments themselves can make the decision as to what's best for
them.

Peter

Peter
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